Few mp3 players make you sit bolt upright in today’s overwhelmed market, but Sony is a competitor that often manages to produce something a bit special.

We have lasting memories of the excellent A1200 and the others from this range, partly for the design, but mainly for the total control it gives you over your music. This is something that hasn’t been done as well by anyone else, and something that Sony brings to its new NW-S706, along with a host of extras.

The design is stunning; it’s a little larger than your thumb and includes a multi-functional shuttle switch, which allows you to either browse and skip individual tracks or move through audio via sort categories. This works extremely well and is a very quick and effective way of getting around.

Everything we liked about the A1200 is also here, including the intelligent shuffle control that finds your favourite tracks, songs from a specific era or the most recent additions and creates random playlists in an instant.

There’s also a cleverly conceived equalizer that allows you to configure two custom audio modes to your favourite genre or custom setting, along with environment adjustment and ambient sound removal. The sound removal feature is barely needed - one of the highlights of the player is the high quality bud earphones supplied, which really do get the most from the already excellent audio.

Getting your tunes transferred to the player isn’t as straightforward as we’d hoped; you can use the device as a portable hard drive with drag and drop, but your music won’t show up in the track list unless you use the Sonicstage software supplied to transfer it.

But to get the most from the NW-S706 you’ll want to do this since the software automatically checks ID3Tags and can retrieve missing information for you by searching online. It’s a pretty painless process that only takes a few seconds per track, and you’ll certainly benefit from these comprehensive ripping and transfer features when using the advanced shuffle functionality on the player.

In addition to audio support you’ll find an FM radio included as standard, the shuttle switch makes it easy to find and store stations in the preset list and audio quality here is very impressive.

One of the many big selling points that must be mentioned is the 50-hour battery life. While you’ll need to encode tracks to Sony’s Atrac format to get close to this sort of stamina, this is again handled well through the Sonicstage software.

The fade-to-black screen offers a range of display modes, each of which shows off the classiness of the player. The clock display in particular looks great.

With an RRP of £179.99 for the 4GB player the Sony isn’t cheap, but look around online and you’ll find it for a lot less. When you consider the overall quality of the package, with its excellent audio control, great usability and seriously classy looks, even the standard price looks pretty reasonable.

In short, this is a fantastic mp3 player that offers those serious about their music total control with almost no compromises over audio. It has just about every rival beat in the most important areas and is highly recommended for anyone looking to get the most from their music.

Also consider:
Apple iPod nano
A modest cosmetic upgrade, but the competitive pricing should guarantee success for the new iPod nano

Samsung K5
A stylish music player with a built in slide-out speaker

Netac A200
The Netac A200 is an excellent mp3 player in its own right, but the FM transmitter gives it an edge over just about every other Flash player in this price range

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